opinion Government and business President Obama is criticized for not having been a businessman. Calls are made, like a broken record, “run government like a business; turn government over to businesspeople.” That’s exactly what you don’t want to do. We don’t want to crash government like the economy...
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2013-08-20 18:21:05

Government and business

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President Obama is criticized for not having been a businessman. Calls are made, like a broken record, “run government like a business; turn government over to businesspeople.”

That’s exactly what you don’t want to do.

We don’t want to crash government like the economy did; not if we’re Second Amendment patriots!

Some people repeat these calls, without thinking it through, because they come from conservative lips. Unfortunately, most calls are either distortions or uninformed, especially conservative politicians in our op eds.

Tracing back to the source of these ideas, we find a class of self-interested and greedy people. (Sometimes they may not even realize it.) These are exactly the people you don’t want running government!

In our defective economic system called capitalism, the goal is to take as much money for yourself, whether you need it or not, and everyone else be damned (“maximize profits“). Not the philosophy you want in leadership of a society, is it?

A good economic system ensures that everyone does well, that “no one is left behind.” Capitalism by its very definition doesn’t do that, and only works, somewhat, by a patchwork of duct-tape and bailing-wire fixes known as regulations and laws.

For example, through a series of laws, among them Glass-Steagall, the economy that crashed in 1929 was kept more or less afloat from the time of Franklin Roosevelt onward.

In the ‘90s, Bill Clinton pushed through NAFTA and happily repealed Glass-Steagall. Within a decade, under George Bush Jr., the economy collapsed, the middle class wiped out and that wealth went to the top, in true capitalist fashion and design.

Businessmen are interested in eliminating jobs, not providing them. No one ever started a business to “provide jobs”!

Businesses are run as dictatorships, not democracies. We’ve decided democracy is preferable over dictatorships for a society.

I've worked at the Brainerd Dispatch with various duties since Dec. 7, 1983. Starting off as an Ad Designer and currently Director of Audience Development. The Dispatch has been an interesting and challenging place to work. I'm fortunate to have made many friends, both co-workers and customers.